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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25538020">Perfect Match</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken'>thedevilchicken</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Algorithmic selected marriage, Arranged Marriage, Desk Sex, First Time, Happy Ending, M/M, Marriage, Online Dating</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 09:20:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,137</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25538020</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony creates a dating app. Because he's the biggest fool in the universe, he launches it with a bang: Tony will marry whoever the algorithm thinks is his best match.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Peter Parker/Tony Stark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>197</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Just Married Exchange 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Perfect Match</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/textbookchoices/gifts">textbookchoices</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Tony made a dating app, he went all out. </p><p>It was all Happy's fault, 100%. He'd been complaining for months - okay, so maybe it was days, maybe it was just the last fifteen minutes over a coffee he'd picked up from Starbucks instead of using the espresso machine on Tony's kitchen counter but hey, Tony also found the whole barista thing pretty intimidating - about how many shitty dates he'd been on thanks to some new dating site he'd signed up with. And when Tony scoffed (at the site's shitty algorithm, not the general notion of online dating, though Happy didn't seem to see the distinction he was making between the two), Happy crossed his arms over his chest the way he does, jutted his chin and said, "So, you think you can do better?"</p><p>Tony, as it happened, was pretty damn sure he could do better. He took it as a challenge, like Happy should've probably known he would, and maybe he did and he'd only brought it up over his early-morning just-out-of-bed Starbucks while Tony was sleep-deprived and undercaffeinated so Tony would go ahead and make a replacement that got him super-compatible dates with women who actually wanted to talk about his golf handicap over dinner. He daydreamed algorithmically through meetings all day then went down to the lab that night, not that he exactly needed the welding torch but he guessed being in the space might help him think. He had F.R.I.D.A.Y. hold his calls (the important ones would just come knock if they needed him, he figured, and the <i>really</i> important ones just rolled their eyes and had F.R.I. put them through), and he got to work. </p><p>It took three weeks, all told, but by the end of it he'd designed an algorithm so damn perfect - the shining pinnacle of dating app perfection if he said so himself - that he was pretty sure he'd just put <i>The Bachelor</i> out of business, or else kinda changed their business model. He told Pepper, who kinda rolled her eyes like <i>so where was your perfect compatibility test when we started dating?</i> and then took the project to the board. There was some in-house testing with pretty good results but Tony has to admit he kinda forgot about the whole project in the meantime, saving the world and all that day-to-day crap. He updated the suit again, helped tweak Peter's like he wasn't playing overqualified lab assistant to a super-enthusiastic college kid he definitely didn't have a crush on, riled up Bruce via video call every couple of days 'cause it turned out he actually did like him when he was angry. And when they went live, Tony took a press conference to walk the accumulated journalists through the essentials. </p><p>"So, Tony, how confident are you about the matches?" one asked. </p><p>Tony shrugged. "Pretty confident," he replied. He smiled his charm-the-press smile. "I mean, I had plenty of examples to give it for what <i>not</i> to do."</p><p>"You going to put your money where your mouth is and try it out yourself?"</p><p>He took it as a challenge. Maybe not his finest moment, but he doesn't do things by halves 'cause he thinks half measures suck. And sure, he didn't have to do it, he didn't even have to say yes to one date never mind full-scale escalation, but the fact was he absolutely did that. He said he was so confident in the algorithm that he'd enter all his data and let it choose him a new spouse.</p><p>Pepper was skeptical, which okay, he'd known she would be even at the time - there'd been a little Pepper in his head saying, <i>don't do it, Tony, what are you thinking!</i> right while he'd been doing it. There'd been a little Rhodey in there too, just frowning at him like Tony had just lived right down to his lowest expectations, and Happy telling him he really hoped he got an airtight prenup. The kid was the only devil on his shoulder that didn't look at him like he hadn't saved the world like twenty times and <i>made time travel possible</i>, and a dating app wasn't totally within his capabilities. The Peter Parker in his head just looked at him like he'd stabbed him in the heart instead, but Tony figured that was for the best.</p><p>They ran the thing like a competition - <i>Win A Date With Tony Stark!</i> except it was more like win several dates for the rest of your life, if you're lucky or unlucky or whatever. Tony told himself it was fine, even when everyone he knew told him it was a shitty idea, one of the worst ones he'd had; he told himself it was fine because whoever won would've had to actively opt into his bullshit in advance. And hey, maybe it'd help get his mind away from where he knew it shouldn't be: someplace inside the kid's Spidey suit. </p><p>"So, you're really going through with this?" Peter asked, in the lab, leaning there over a microscope he totally wasn't actually using in one of those shirts he'd started to wear that clung in all the right-wrong places. <i>That</i> was where Tony knew his mind shouldn't be - Peter Parker was barely twenty years old, barely into college, still the same kid Tony had known since he was young enough that <i>kid</i> almost hadn't sounded condescending. Somewhere along the way the nickname had turned to self defense, like maybe if he tried to think of him like he'd been instead of how he was it might make his mind stop wandering right to where his hands wanted to go. It didn't work, but you couldn't blame a guy for trying. </p><p>"Yeah, I'm really going through with this," Tony replied. "Morgan thinks it'll be great."</p><p>Peter turned his head and frowned back at him over one shoulder and yeah, bending over the bench like that wasn't helping Tony's dirty old guy mind at all. "So you trust the opinion of a seven-year-old more than everybody else you know?"</p><p>"To be fair, she's a brilliant seven-year-old." Which, okay, sounded kinda lame even to him. </p><p>"Maybe you could just try dating like a normal person?" Peter's frown deepened. He stood up and turned around and leaned against the bench, arms crossed over his chest. "I mean, okay, you're not really a normal person. But you could date. You don't have to get married. You totally don't have to get married just to prove a point, Mr. Stark - everyone already knows you're a genius."</p><p>Tony tilted his head. "You know, you sound a lot like Pepper," he said.</p><p>"Pepper thinks you're not normal?"</p><p>Tony laughed. "Ouch," he said, and clasped both hands over his chest where the reactor scar was, and when Peter's expression changed from maybe-teasing to kinda-almost-alarmed, Tony just flapped his hands at him until he stopped trying to protest about how he hadn't meant it like that. Tony knew he hadn't. Peter still had that schoolboy crush that had never worn off and if Tony had been a better man, he knew he'd've just gone ahead and let him down gently years ago. Tony, however, was not that better man; as much as Peter tried to protest he couldn't be all bad if he'd died to save the world, that didn't mean a thing about his general morals. At first, he'd told himself he just liked the attention. Later, though, after Thanos, after Tony's big return, he'd admitted it, at least to himself: he was in way over his head where Peter Parker was concerned.</p><p>They got back to work but that didn't last for long. Peter trailed off mid-sentence, frowning through the schematic for his new suit that they'd been working on as they sat there on a pair of high stools side-by-side at the workbench. Peter stood, turned, tucked his hands in behind the small of his back and leaned against the bench. He glanced at Tony. He frowned. </p><p>"Look, Mr. Stark," he said. "What if I said I wished you wouldn't go through with it?"</p><p>"The wedding thing?" Tony replied. "Look, kid, don't be concerned on my account. Nothing's gonna change."</p><p>"Except you'll be married."</p><p>"Well, yeah. That's kinda the point of a wedding."</p><p>Peter made a face at him like part of the way between a grimace and a smile. "But what if I said don't do it <i>for me</i>?" he asked.</p><p>Tony's insides clenched, that weird adrenaline-fueled drop-spike like every time the suit crapped out and he plummeted toward the Earth. He was pretty sure they were overdue the conversation - they should've had it years ago - but he'd always kinda hoped they'd put it off and put it off till it didn't matter anymore. So he took a breath, ready to let him down, ready to be the disappointment he'd known was years in the making and was totally his fault. He meant to say, <i>Look, Pete, I'm too old for you.</i> He meant to say, <i>Look, Pete, you're too young for me.</i> He meant to say, <i>Look, Pete, I'm the guy who's marketing a dating app by propositioning a stranger</i>, though he was pretty sure that was the wrong damn word. He meant to say a lot of things but he didn't make it past the first two words; he said, "Look, Pete--" then Peter Parker's mouth swallowed the rest.</p><p>Tony's shaky morals didn't stand a chance after that 'cause kissing him was all he'd thought about for months, except, maybe, kissing him wasn't <i>all</i> he'd thought about. He kissed him back. He didn't mean to, like that was an excuse, but he stood, and he stepped Peter back against the bench, still kissing him, nipping his lip, fingers in his hair. Then his mouth went down to the crook of Peter's neck, he sucked there, grazed him with his teeth while Peter fucking moaned out loud and slipped his hands underneath the back of Tony's shirt. He'd thought maybe agreeing to marry a stranger on the internet was the worst mistake he'd made in a really long time but when he pressed one palm flat to the bench behind Peter's back, as he leaned in close and shifted one thigh against the front of Peter's jeans...that took the cake. Peter shuddered, and he groaned, and he came right then and there.</p><p>"Oh my God, Mr. Stark, I'm sorry," Peter said, somewhere by Tony's ear, and Tony could almost hear the blush in the tone of his voice. "That happens sometimes. It's the powers, I think. Keep going? Please? I'll be good to go again in a minute." And fuck, when Tony shifted his thigh, he was pretty sure that he believed him; he felt Peter's dick stir behind the zipper of his ruined denim.</p><p>"Shit, kid, that's hot," he said, and he hissed in a breath as he rocked his own dumb erection against Peter's clothed hip. Not like Peter's hips were clothed for long, though - when Tony pulled back so he could either flee the scene or else shove his own pants down like he had no self-control at all, Peter unbuckled his belt and shoved his jeans down to his knees before Tony had undone a single button. And jeez, the kid was hard again already, his dick all flushed and slick with his own thirty-seconds-ago orgasm, like that made sense, though Tony was pretty sure <i>sense</i> was not a word he could associate with anything that had happened in the last four minutes. Peter hitched up his shirt so it didn't hang down and get a jizz-stained hem and Tony figured what the hell and pulled his own shirt off. Peter bit his lip as he looked at Tony standing there, bare from head to knee. Then he turned around, and he bent down low.</p><p>There was lube in the lab. Peter didn't ask what it was doing there though Tony was at that turned on point where he might've told him exactly how many times since he'd popped back out of the grave he'd beaten off while imagining him. He slicked his fingers but when he parted Peter's cheeks and rubbed against his hole, Peter huffed out a breath against the bench and said, "Will you just...could you, y'know? I'll be fine. Please." He glanced back over his shoulder. "Please, Mr. Stark?" And okay, so Tony should've said no. Tony should've said, <i>if you can't say "Tony, will you fuck me?" then we should maybe stop</i>. But fuck if the look on the kid's face didn't make Tony's cock swell harder.</p><p>"Sure, kid," he said. "Whatever you want." And he nudged the head of his dick down against Peter's hole. He shifted forward, gave his hips a rock, held Peter's cheeks apart and thumbed the rim of his hole. He tip pushed in. Peter moaned. Tony groaned. Then, in one long, not-too-slow thrust, he pushed the rest in after.</p><p>Peter came twice more, against the side of the bench with Tony's cock inside him. Tony came in him, when he realized how Peter was clutching the edge of the bench to keep his super-strength from hurting him. Then he turned the kid around and fuck, they kissed again, hard, deep, softening dicks caught up between their stomachs, come smudged against their skin. Tony held him tight. Peter held him back, just mercifully not tight enough to crush him. Then Tony - messed up, fucked up Tony - took a shaky breath and pulled away.</p><p>"Kid, I--" Tony said, but Peter cut him off.</p><p>"Don't tell me we made a mistake," Peter said, with a look on his face just like that devil on Tony's shoulder - like he's stabbed him in the heart sometime while they were fucking.</p><p>Tony grimaced. He didn't say it. He just pulled up his jeans and pulled on his shirt, and that was how they left things. Real mature, he thought. Way to let the kid down gently.</p><p>The competition went ahead. Pepper couldn't say it wasn't great for business - Tony was all over the press, which meant the app was all over the press which meant the company was all over the press and, for once, it was <i>good</i> press. Tony sat in the lab with a glass of whisky on the bench and went through his details with F.R.I.D.A.Y., watching her input them, wondering what sort of a match they'd find. Maybe he'd wind up married to an Austrian heiress with a tiara the size of her head or a cobbler from Baton Rouge who could make a great pair of wingtips to go with his new suit. And okay, so maybe he could've fixed the whole thing, looked through the entrants, taken his pick or whatever, but he figured what the hell, que sera sera, problem solved: he'd be married, and maybe, someday, the kid might talk to him again.</p><p>They ran the algorithm live in a press conference at the rebuilt compound. They rigged up a big red button Tony could push to start it, like he was firing torpedoes from a submarine instead of virtually saying <i>I do</i>, though he guessed it should've almost been as serious, at least for him. And when the screen stopped its totally over-the-top animation (also rigged for effect), it landed on a profile. A familiar profile, or at least a familiar photo. On the screen, projected large enough for the whole room to see, was Peter Parker, with a lopsided smile and hair leaning toward the bedhead side of tousled like maybe he'd done it on purpose but then again maybe not. He was wearing a knockoff <i>Alien</i> shirt and Tony's heart hammered in his chest like maybe there was a little xenomorph in there trying to burst out. That might've been easier, he thought - it would've all been over pretty quickly, and he wouldn't've been standing there in front of a room full of journalists all asking if maybe the the site had screwed up. </p><p>The site wasn't screwed up. The settings weren't wrong. He'd set them pretty wide, sure - no preference for gender, ages twenty to fifty - and let the algorithm handle the rest 'cause he'd been so goddamn confident. So Tony just smiled his most charming press conference smile and said they'd have a wedding update soon. </p><p>Peter was in the lab when he got down there, sitting on the workbench, swinging his feet, heels of his sneakers drumming lightly. He looked up. He smiled nervously.</p><p>"Kid, what did you do?" Tony asked. </p><p>"I entered a competition," Peter replied. "You see, there's this guy I know who made an algorithm to find his perfect partner."</p><p>"And you're interested in this guy?"</p><p>"I think he's kinda cool, I guess?" Peter shrugged. "He messes up a lot. I mean, <i>a lot</i>." He tucked his hands under his thighs, against the bench, leaning forward a little, like he was trying to keep from wringing them. "But I guess I like him? I figured if I signed up, and it chose someone else, I'd know it really was a bad idea, y'know? No harm done." </p><p>Peter changed his mind about the hands. He sat up. He laced his fingers together and tucked both hands under his chin, against his chest. He looked at Tony through his eyelashes like some goddamn unintentional coquette, like they hadn't screwed half-clothed two feet from where he sat, while Tony's heart beat a mile a goddamn minute. </p><p>"You're sure it works, right? The app, I mean."</p><p>Tony made a face. What that face was meant to mean, he wasn't sure, but he for damn sure made it. Because the fact was he guessed Peter had him there. </p><p>"Yeah, I'm sure it works," he admitted. </p><p>"You'd've been alerted to a security breach, right? I bet you wrote that in."</p><p>"Yeah."</p><p>When Peter smiled, it was that same lopsided, self-conscious, hopeful smile from his app profile, and Tony's chest felt kinda tight. His face felt warm.</p><p>"Then I guess I know," Peter said.</p><p>Tony guessed he did, too. </p><p>They were married twelve days later, bad ideas be damned. Morgan was a flower girl with the biggest smile in the room right there on her face, or at least it was the biggest after Peter's, and Tony watched the two of them twirling on the dancefloor after dinner. Morgan was the better dancer, and pretty gracious about it when Tony stepped in. She made Nebula dance with her instead.</p><p>Maybe they skipped a step. Maybe they skipped a whole lot of them. And maybe the app turned out to be a huge success but honestly? By then Tony couldn't've cared less about dating if he'd tried.</p>
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